Getty Museum

The Coronation of Pepin

Date

written 1463–1465; illuminated 1467–1472

Medium

Tempera colors, gold leaf, and gold paint

Culture

Flemish

Department

Manuscripts

Institution

Getty Museum

Sitting on an elaborately upholstered throne covered with fleurs-de-lis, Charles Martel's son Pepin the Short receives his crown as king of the Franks in 751. The papal legate Boniface, in red at the left, and a pair of Frankish bishops at either side of Pepin performed the ceremony at Soissons. Among the splendidly attired nobles in attendance was "the powerful duke Henry of Metz" mentioned in the text below, probably the figure in the ermine-trimmed cape at the far right. The illuminator, Loyset Liédet, gave the scene the look of a coronation of his own time rather than of seven hundred years earlier. The pageantry would have held a special appeal for an aristocratic, late medieval viewer.

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